SerialDisposable<T>
05 May 2015Reactive Extensions includes a super useful class called SerialDisposable. The idea is you can assign any IDisposable to it and it automatically disposes of any previously assigned value. Suppose, for example, you have a need to create a UIPopoverController whenever some user interaction occurs:
private readonly SerialDisposable popoverDisposable = new SerialDisposable();
private UIPopoverController searchPopover;
private UIPopoverController SearchPopover
{
get { ... }
set { ... }
}
// elsewhere in the code
someUserInteractionObservable
.Select(_ => new UIPopoverController(...))
.Subscribe(
x =>
{
popoverDisposable.Disposable = x;
this.SearchPopover = x;
});
Here we ensure that any previously created UIPopoverController is disposed of by assigning the newly created one to the Disposable property of our SerialDisposable. But notice how we also assign the same value to our SearchPopover property. That’s because SerialDisposable.Disposable is of type IDisposable. That is, by storing our UIPopoverController inside a SerialDisposable, we’ve lost some compile-time type information.
OK, so the example is contrived and incomplete but you get the point.
When faced with this situation of either doubling-up on backing fields versus sprinkling the code with casts, I figured I’d just create a generic SerialDisposable<T> class instead:
namespace System.Reactive.Disposables
{
using System;
// generic variant of Rx's SerialDisposable class
public sealed class SerialDisposable<T> : ICancelable, IDisposable
where T : IDisposable
{
private readonly SerialDisposable disposable;
public SerialDisposable()
{
this.disposable = new SerialDisposable();
}
public bool IsDisposed => this.disposable.IsDisposed;
public T Disposable
{
get { return (T)this.disposable.Disposable; }
set { this.disposable.Disposable = value; }
}
public void Dispose()
=> this.disposable.Dispose();
}
}
SerialDisposable is sealed, so we’re forced to use composition instead of inheritance, but we were going to do that anyway, right?
The upshot is that now we can just declare a single field of type SerialDisposable<UIPopoverController> and utilize that wherever relevant:
private readonly SerialDisposable<UIPopoverController> searchPopover = ...;
private UIPopoverController SearchPopover
{
get { return this.searchPopover.Disposable; }
set
{
this.searchPopover.Disposable = value;
// plus raise property changed if necessary
}
}
// elsewhere in the code
someUserInteractionObservable
.Select(_ => new UIPopoverController(...))
.Subscribe(x => this.SearchPopover = x);
I’ve been pondering as well whether it would be a Good Idea™ to have SerialDisposable<T> also implement IObservable<T>, where each instance assigned to the Disposable property ticks the observable. As yet, the jury’s out.